Modern corn harvesting machines pick corn by removing ears from cornstalks in multiple rows at a time. These machines are quite efficient if the stalks are upright and reasonably free of cross entanglement between adjacent rows. However, none of these conventional machines operate efficiently where a large portion of the crop has been subjected to adverse conditions such as high winds, driving rain, and freezing, causing a substantial portion of the crop to be lost when the corn ear bearing stalks are bent over or flattened against the ground. In this situation, conventional corn harvesting machines function very poorly because they simply pass over the downed stalks, leaving their ears in the field.
One of the problems in conventional corn harvesting machines is that severely downed cornstalks break off at the ground and become tangled and piled on the tops of the row dividing snouts. This requires the operator to stop and clear them by hand from time to time.
In severely downed, wind-flattened corn, farmers often just abandon the crop and collect insurance on it, or they may walk through the field and laboriously salvage as much as they can by hand.
The loss in severely downed corn can be fifteen to twenty bushels per acre, and sometimes more. At one time, this was tolerable because corn fields generally were fenced and most farmers raised cattle and hogs which they turned in to recover the downed corn. Further, it provided an ideal feeding ground for wild game which provided a supplemental food supply and were beneficial in other ways. However, few grain farmers today fence their corn fields or even raise livestock which could be confined in them if they field if it were fenced. Further, the increasing costs of farming provide a real economic incentive to maximize the yield per acre and minimize grain left in the field for wild game.